More than a hundred complex inscriptions, most of them engraved on the clayey rock with fingers, stones and wood, which must be studied and analyzed for years to decipher. A particular vision of the earth and the universe of the inhabitants of southern Europe between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago. With a surprising level of conservation thanks to the fact that they have remained hidden for all this time inside an underground cave on the outskirts of a town of just 40 inhabitants, La Febró (Baix Camp), in a natural setting in the Prades Mountains .
Among the hundreds of engravings on the rock, different figures of quadrupeds, zigzags, linear lines or circles are represented. There are also lines that imitate suns and stars. A series of bovids and equines stand out. There is also a composition reminiscent of an eyed idol. The worldview that those first agricultural and livestock societies had.
One of the singularities of the mural is that it is made exclusively with the engraving technique, either using a stone and wood tool in the case of the details, or directly with the fingers. The discovery, of great value, has been made public today by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES). According to experts, it is a composition related to the worldview of the agricultural and livestock societies of the Prades Mountains, in the interior of Camp de Tarragona, during the Chalcolithic-Bronze period (about 5,000-3,000 years ago).
“It is among the best compositions of post-paleolithic underground schematic and abstract art in the Mediterranean basin. It is an exceptional set of rock art, unique in Catalonia, both for its singularity and for its excellent state of conservation, which enters the podium of the few representations of underground schematic art”, highlights the IPHES. The work that will now be carried out at the site, where it is believed that there could be people buried, according to Ramon Viñas (IPHES), will serve to study how the hunter-gatherers ended and the arrival of the first farmers-ranchers in this area. of the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
The enormous mural, a kind of cave altarpiece, will not be open to public visits. Access has been closed with a door and its good conservation will be guaranteed with temperature and humidity meters. Its remote location was inaccessible until speleologists made their way when they sensed that there was a hidden room at one end of an underground cave some 500 meters long. Its location, unnoticed until now, has served to preserve hundreds of symbolic engravings as if time had stopped for more than 3,000 years.
The engravings, spread over an eight meter long mural, have been found inside a 90 square meter oval room. It is an exceptional sample of rock art because experts maintain that the room became a symbolic place to remember the deceased. They were made by the inhabitants of these Prades mountains, in the post-paleolithic period, in the neolithic process.
A space to honor the dead and to express their way of understanding the world and the cosmos. The room, now baptized as that of Engravings, is inside what is known as the Cova de la Vila de la Febró.
The engravings have already been declared, due to their “uniqueness and exceptionality” as a Cultural Asset of National Interest (BCIN) by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat.
